Market forces are neither righteous or wicked. They also don't care at all about short-term vs long-term consequences. We don't always have to succumb to these forces and just say "oh well market said so."
Gravity is also a constant and unrelenting force yet we still fly airplanes.
Are there things like airplanes that defy market forces in a controlled manner that can help small businesses?
> They also don't care at all about short-term vs long-term consequences.
Prices don't care about externalities. External consequences, not consequences per some sort of time window. Markets are actually often as good as can be expected at taking time into account at least as it may pertain to a particular good in question.
> Are there things like airplanes that defy market forces in a controlled manner
Markets exist because there are finite amounts of things, you can't really defy that. It would be nice if tradeoffs never needed to exist.
To emphasize your point further, airplanes make a tradeoff in terms of massive fuel expenditure to get a few people or goods elsewhere quickly.
There are similar tradeoffs in markets -- the town here made one of those tradeoffs in excluding Walmart. They relegated their residents to buying from higher priced stores or driving further to shop at a big box store. And they (and I) were happy with that tradeoff.
The tradeoff they have available against e-commerce is higher local taxes on all goods purchased with subsidies from those taxes going back to brick and mortar locations. (You can't only tax mail order goods without violating the interstate commerce clause, as I understand it.)
True, except that we don't built airplanes by ignoring the fundamentals of gravity or its sheer existence. Bureaucrats and politicians abound who can't grasp supply and demand, and have no accountability when reality causes their plans to crash.
Airplanes have to abide by fixed natural laws. Our version of markets is defined entirely by humans and we can change the rules in whatever way we wish. The only truly free market would be no laws at all and let the stronger win.
> Our version of markets is defined entirely by humans and we can change the rules in whatever way we wish.
no, you can't. everywhere people trade, there's a market. all you can do is raise the costs associated with legal markets, and deprive those engaging in trade of the rule of law.
take a look at the drug cartels for what happens when you try and legislate markets totally out of existence.
Then there can be only one. Either by the destruction of all competitors, or the amalgamation of the few remaining such that they behave as one (telecoms aren't that far off here). Then the market isn't free, it's just lords and their serfs.
Gravity is also a constant and unrelenting force yet we still fly airplanes.
Are there things like airplanes that defy market forces in a controlled manner that can help small businesses?